Another early adopter of Google Buzz. Photograph: Stian Lysberg/AFP/Getty Images

Google Buzz? It's as popular as a thing that's not very popular, it seems, at least going by the early reactions. A rapid roundup from the web...

Dave Winer, of scripting.com and Userland (which made hooking up to RSS easy to do) isn't a fan:

"It violates the prime directive of new software. It starts turned on, and the way to turn it off is all-but invisible. And it invades a space that heretofore Google helped to protect. One of the big values of Gmail is its spam filter. Now all of a sudden it's as if the exhaust was reversed, and it was spraying dirt into my message stream, instead of filtering it out.

"New software should be easy to try out, and there should be no penalty for doing so. Here, they didn't even give us an option, I was automatically signed up, and the way out was hidden. The first bit, which is fun -- create a new post -- is followed by a flood of new messages in a semi-sacred private place, my email inbox."

"Not sure where Buzz fits in my arsenal of social media tools, how often I'll use it, or if it will eventually feel too much like unread email — but I'm happy to see Google taking social media seriously. It's early days, let the attention/follower wars begin."

Next, Robert Scoble, who never saw a social media service he didn't like, though whether the feeling is mutual is an open question. But it seems this is one that, while he doesn't not like it, he isn't exactly showering hosannahs on it either. His reasons (cut down - see the post for the full list):

"1. Facebook has a defensible position in identity. 2. Google isn't trusted socially. 3. Google doesn't have Mark Zuckerberg. "Mark gets how to hook people in through social tricks that very few people understand. FriendFeed, for instance, didn't get it. Neither does Twitter." 4. Google has big company disease that Twitter never had. 5. Google doesn't have developers that Facebook has. 6. Google isn't willing to piss its users off to get to the next level."

Mashable is REALLY EXCITED about it, but then Mashable seems to get really excited about everything. Just my impression?

The consensus that seems to be gathering is that it requires considerable computing resource - you can use it if you're mobile on the iPhone or Android 4.0, but otherwise you're out of luck - which perhaps once again shows the tunnel vision of people who live in Silicon Valley. (It also geotags everything, so it's only going to be for the spiffiest of smartphones.)

The thing that's fantastic about text messaging, and hence Twitter's ability to squeeze itself into text messages, is that it's applicable all over the world right now. Google Buzz may be just what people want five years from now, but that gives Twitter - and of course Google's newest, most dangerous threat, Facebook - a five-year head start. That might not be so clever.

Still, we'll just go back now and continue doing our work on Google Wave. Oh, hang on - we never did. Does anyone (still) use Wave? If so, what for?